Maciej Slawomir Wiercinski v The 2nd Division of The Criminal Circuit in Olsztyn, Poland
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE LATHAM,MR JUSTICE COOKE |
| Judgment Date | 17 January 2008 |
| Neutral Citation | [2008] EWHC 200 (Admin) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Date | 17 January 2008 |
| Docket Number | CO/10296/2007 |
[2008] EWHC 200 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
DIVISIONAL COURT
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London WC2A 2LL
Lord Justice Latham
Mr Justice Cooke
CO/10296/2007
Mr J Jones (instructed by Lawrence & Co, 404 Harrow Road, London W9 2HU) appeared on behalf of the Claimant
Mr B Lloyd (instructed by Crown Prosecution Service, Special Crime Division, Fifth Floor, 50 Ludgate Hill, London EC4M 7EX) appeared on behalf of the Defendant
This is an appeal from an order of 14th November 2007 when District Judge Wickham ordered that this appellant should be remanded in custody and ultimately extradited to Poland, which is the requesting state, on the basis of three separate sets of proceedings.
In one sense this appeal is restricted in scope because, of those three sets of proceedings, the appeal relates to only one. It follows that the ultimate order for the appellant's extradition will stand, subject to the arguments that are made in relation to one of those sets of proceedings. The position appears that the appellant has been sentenced in Poland, in his absence, to sentences of the equivalent of imprisonment and the basis of the claim for his return is the provisions of section 65(3) of the Extradition Act 2003 in that he is required to be returned, in the request, in order to serve those sentences of imprisonment.
The proceedings with which we are concerned can be identified by the number 796/02 in which he was charged and convicted of three offences. One was an offence of theft, the second was an offence of possession of heroin and the third was an offence under Polish law of persistently avoiding his duty to take care of his child.
As far as the first and the second charges are concerned, those are capable of being extraditable offences. As far as the third charge is concerned, that is not capable of being an extraditable offence because it is not conduct which satisfies the double criminality test in section 65(3)b of the Act. That was indeed the conclusion of the district judge and she declared that that third count was not an extraditable offence. The first typical point that is taken is that the consequence of that should have been that she should have ordered the appellant's discharge in consequence of that finding. Insofar as the order failed to do so, it certainly should have done, but ultimately that does not affect the practicalities of the position.
Returning to the substitute argument on this appeal, it is that the problem presented to the courts here is the form of the order imposing the penalty of imprisonment on the appellant. It was expressed as an aggregate sentence of 1 year and 2 months. There was no subdivision of that sentence as between the three offences and it is accordingly entirely unclear on the documents that we have whether or not the aggregated sentence is, or would be, in terms of sentencing practice in this country, a series of consecutive sentences making up the total of 1 year 2 months or three concurrent sentences with a maximum within it of 1 year 2 months. Therein lies the difficulty in this case.
Firstly, in order to justify the return of the appellant to Poland on the basis of the European arrest warrant, which was the basis of the proceedings, the court had to be satisfied firstly that the warrant was in proper form in accordance with section 2 of the Act and, secondly, that the offences were indeed extraditable offences within the terms of section 65(3), as I have indicated.
In relation to the warrant itself, the difficulty arises out of the requirement in section 2 of the Act that the sentence in cases such as this should be identified. Section 2(6) requires in circumstances such as this that the warrant should include:
“e) particulars of the sentence...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Kucera v District Court of Karvina, Czech Republic
...was not met and the warrant was not valid. 26 Miss Naqshbandi relied on the recent decision of this court in Wiercinski v The 2 Division of the Criminal Circuit in Olsztyn, Poland [2008] EWHC 200 (Admin). In that case, the appellant was convicted in Poland of three offences, namely theft, p......
-
Kortas v Regional Court in Bydgoszcz (Poland)
...and the cases there discussed. 14 Article 607e of the Polish criminal codes provides, in a translation found in Wiercinski v Poland [2008] EWHC 200 (Admin): "1. A person surrendered in performance of a warrant cannot be prosecuted for offences other than those that formed the base for surre......
-
Maciej Brodziak v Circuit Court in Warsaw, Poland
...Brodziak in relation to section 2(6)(e) (his ground (2)) is founded on the judgment of the Divisional Court in Wiercinski v 2nd Division of the Criminal Circuit in Olsztyn, Poland [2008] EWHC 200 (Admin). In Wiercinski there was an aggregate sentence in respect of three offences, two of whi......
-
R Przemyslaw Ciesielski v District Court in Kalisz, Poland
...in two recent decisions of the Divisional Court, namely Wiercinski v 2nd Division of the Criminal Circuit in Olsztyn, Poland[2008] Extradition LR 55 and Kucera v District Court of Karvina, Czech Republic[2008] Extradition LR 149. In each of these cases the European arrest warrant referred t......